Brian Armstrong, co-founder of Coinbase, announced that they are starting a new project called Token, a combination of instant messaging and ethereum based payment app and a browser for ethereum apps.

As the banking system in China is said to be inefficient, Chinese citizens have flocked to apps like WeChat Pay and AliPay. They account for more than half of all transactions in the country as customers can use them to send money from their phones. China is not the only one, as an announcement post said:

“Mobile money is growing. We were inspired by WeChat in China, PayTM in India, MPESA in Kenya, and others. Each of these has revolutionized payments in one country. We would like to bring something similar to the other ~180 countries, and also enable a global payment network based on open standards, so that every country becomes interoperable, and everyone has access to financial services.”

There are no specific details provided with regard to how the app would be funded. It is expected that Token would be integrated with Coinbase.

“We were inspired by apps like WeChat that are driving a large volume of digital payments in China. We wanted to build something for the rest of the world that works on open protocols.”, Coinbase commented in their announcement.

As mentioned previously, the app will be based on ethereum. The browser for ethereum apps is particularly interesting as it might be filling a gap.

There is no mention of bitcoin, except for the answer of Token regarding their choice of ethereum:

“Right now, the transaction fees are a bit too high in Bitcoin to work for small payments. We envision a large number of small payments happening with Token, so we started with Ethereum.”

Ethereum has recently seen various new projects being built on it. It remains to be seen, if this is going to be a lasting tendency.